ARCHIVED - Corvera airport opening could be further delayed

Despite the importance of making quick progress, the proposal to open the airport in April could be premature

Juan Bernal, the regional minister for the economy and Hacienda, has again stressed the importance of putting the Corvera airport management contract out to tender as soon as possible with the aim of awarding the contract “at the end of this year or the beginning of 2014”.
Sr Bernal made his comments following the weekly regional cabinet meeting on Friday, confirming what most people already know: that opening the airport as quickly as the regional politicians would like it to be opened isn´t realistic.

Although the exact date for opening up the contract to bidders has not been decided yet government officials continually stress the need for haste, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that the route map for finally opening the airport is still strewn with potential obstacles. The much-quoted intention to have the facility up and running in April now looks like being postponed yet again, with the horizon now being broadened to encompass May and June.

The latest setback has been the much publicized conflict with Sacyr, the major shareholder in Aeromur, but Sr Bernal insists that the difficulty of ending the contract with Aeromur has not yet caused a major delay. It is now two weeks since things came to a head when Sacyr refused to allow a stock-take of assets at Corvera to go ahead, and the government has still not been able to take possession of the airport.

It now transpires that whoever takes on the new management contract at the airport will not have to take on all of the 200-million-euro debt for which the government acted as guarantor, since around ten per cent of the amount could be set off against a favourable asset count, according to Sr Bernal. The rest will be paid in instalments by the new management company to the regional government, who in turn will pass it on to the syndicate of banks who issued the loan.

The 200-million-euro debt is currently frozen pending re-negotiation, and it has yet to be decided when the amount will be added to the total debt figure of the Region of Murcia, which last month reached 4,800 million euros.

It also hoped by the government that the new management company will take on the payment of 36 million euros to Aena in order to compensate for the closure of San Javier airport, and that the employees currently staffing San Javier will be transferred to Corvera, but of course, all that depends on finding a concessionary and the acquiescence of the unions.

However, most expats have no interest in any of the above, their only concern is when will the airport open?
To which the answer is there’sno answer, although the date has now just stretched from early in the spring to sometime in the first 6 months of the year.